AUBURN — One weekend can be ignored, two weekends is a bad trend and three weekends is too much for Auburn coach Butch Thompson to take.

Less than 24 hours after he applauded the Tigers' effort in a Saturday night loss, Thompson has officially seen enough of giveaway at-bats, fielding errors and most importantly what he called “feeling sorry for ourselves” in a 5-0 loss to Missouri on Easter Sunday.

“The other way I see about us getting better is that has to do with us playing the game, engineering some things, playing offense and dominating the routine play,” Thompson said. “For two days I thought they threw the fastball by us and I thought we were a little pouty and that’s one thing we will not allow.”

“We need our best players to play at their best and if they start getting sideways or sidetracked or putting their head down, there’s no time for that in this league.”

Auburn head coach Butch Thompson after 5-0 loss to Missouri.

Thompson may have been referencing an at-bat in the fourth inning when senior Josh Anthony had words with home-plate umpire Jacob Asher over a strike one call. It forced Thompson to come out of the dugout to have an unpleasant chat with both his third baseman and Asher.

“When you get punched in the mouth, they’re going to have to check back into competition mode instead of running away,” Thompson said. “Instead of going and running behind a dugout to blow off steam, they need to take a step forward and be competitive. It doesn’t have to be rah-rah, but I can tell when somebody’s head is connected to the barrel and when they’re searching it out and when they’re fighting. You can tell when that’s happening and when it’s not.”

In the last two days against Missouri pitching, Auburn (22-7, 4-5 SEC) saw its 1-5 hitters go 2-for-35 with 10 strikeouts. Both hits were by freshman Steven Williams. Williams, a top prospect in this last recruiting class, had the home team’s only hit Sunday — a single to right field in the sixth inning.

That mix of top five hitters for Auburn consists of two juniors (Brendan Venter and Brett Wright) and a senior (Anthony) who only reached Sunday with each receiving a walk.

“We need our best players to play at their best and if they start getting sideways or sidetracked or putting their head down, there’s no time for that in this league,” Thompson said. “We definitely need to reset in that category as well. We’ll encourage them with that but we made sure we called them out on it today moving into a new week.”

Auburn is now hitting .206 in SEC play with only two starters over .250.

After Auburn scored just six runs in a home SEC series against an unranked opponent, Auburn's next league series is at Arkansas where the No. 6 Razorbacks are second in the league in batting average, slugging percentage and on-base percentage.

Auburn had six errors throughout the weekend, including one by Luke Jarvis in the fifth inning Sunday. It led to back-to-back walks by Auburn starter Tanner Burns (2-4) and a grand slam by Trey Harris for the decisive blow by Missouri. Harris, who is hitting .390 in SEC play this season, drove in all five of Missouri’s runs Saturday and finished the weekend 4-of-12 with three extra-base hits.

Missouri starter Bryce Montes De Oca, whose first pitch Sunday was recorded at 102 mph on the Plainsman Park radar gun, settled in after effective wildness. He allowed just one hit and five base runners over six innings in a 97-pitch effort. It mirrored his seven-inning no-hit performance against Maryland-Baltimore County on March 4.

“I’m really happy with our effort and it is a big series win for us," Missouri coach Steve Beisel said. "What we talked about postgame was the reason that we are here in this position is what we have done up to this point. We can’t take anything for granted. We have to continue to work hard and know that each series is its own challenge. We have to enjoy the moment right now, but we have to get ready to go next week.”